The Wooing of King Wilmore
by The Black Doll
Summary: King Wilmore needs to find a wife, but he's not a little dumb, and his method of selecting a bride is far from conventional . . .


**The Wooing of King Wilmore**

Once upon a time there was a great kingdom full of happy people who all paid their taxes on time. One of its happiest inhabitants was its ruler, King Wilmore. His people loved him, he had good dental hygiene, and he was looked after night and day by a very pretty chambermaid called Angela.

In fact the only thing to mar King Wilmore's happiness was the fact that he had no wife. This didn't bother him very much – he liked his life the way it was – but the Prime Minister kept on nagging him about royal heirs, and the urgent need to acquire one. At first the King didn't treat this very seriously, but eventually he gave in and consented to the insertion of an advertisement in the local newspaper's lonely hearts' column.

The only condition that King Wilmore insisted on was that any potential bride must be able to prove that she was genuinely of royal blood before he would marry her. Recently there had been several cases of kings marrying young women who had appeared impeccably royal, but turned out to actually be swineherds' daughters. The exuberant happiness of these ill-assorted couples, as reported in the tabloid press, had rather offended King Wilmore, who was more than a little status conscious.

It was therefore decreed that any applicant must satisfy the King of her royalty by passing an examination. Angela had recently given him a book of fairy-tales, as a birthday present, which described many unusual attributes that distinguished true princesses from the common herd of womankind. As this was precisely the kind of thing he needed, King Wilmore decided to base his examinations upon the book.

The advertisement duly appeared, and a few days later the first hopeful princess arrive. She bountifully satisfied the traditional conditions of youth, beauty and riches, so all that delayed a happy consummation was King Wilmore's _special_ condition. The test he had decided to use involved asking the putative princess to pass the night in a bed with a hundred mattresses, under the bottom of which he had placed a pea. The examination was successful, in that the princess could not sleep – instead she spent the night searching through her bedclothes. Unfortunately, by the time she found the pea she was so exhausted that she suffered a heart attack and was found dead the next morning.

The second princess arrived riding on white horse. King Wilmore's test this time involved confronting her with the severed head of this animal – according to his sources such heads frequently held long conversations with their ex-owners, provided of course that those ex-owners were of royal blood. It was perhaps unfortunate that the King did not think it worth his while to find out anything about his potential brides in advance. If he had done he would have known that this particular princess was the president of the association for the prevention of cruelty to horses.

Soon after King Wilmore returned home from prison the third princess arrived. He was a little chastened by his previous experiences, so he played safe by requiring her to kiss an elderly frog that lived in the royal lily pond. He claimed that if a princess kissed a frog it would immediately be transformed into a prince, and surprisingly this turned out to be true. It was pure misfortune that the ex-frog was so handsome that the princess fell in love with him and they eloped together later that evening.

Many more princesses came to take their turn at the matrimonial stakes, but none were successful. We pass without comment over the case of the princess whom King Wilmore decided to prick with a spindle, to see whether she slept for a hundred years, as nobody will know for certain whether she passed the test until well the next century. Another actually managed to satisfy the King that she was a princess, but two days before the wedding a revolution broke out in her father's kingdom, and he was demoted from King to tractor driver third class.

On the evening of what should have been his wedding day, King Wilmore retired to bed feeling somewhat disgruntled. In his book of fairy-tales the princesses always ended up living happily ever after. There was no mention of their going mad, or dying, or prosecuting people for cruelty to animals, or running away. He had a good mind to write to the author telling him just how inaccurate the book was and suggesting that future editions should carry a health warning. The King lay, sadly reading about Rumplestiltskin, until at last he fell asleep, certain that he would never find a wife.

He was awoken, after several hours of fitful sleep, by a tremendous thunderclap. He had scarcely recovered from this when he was further shocked by the realisation that he was not alone – standing by the window was an old woman dressed in black and wearing a tall pointed hat. The King had studied his book of fairy-tales very thoroughly and he therefore had little difficulty in determining that his visitor was a witch.

The Witch stood by the window until she was quite certain that she had all of King Wilmore's terrified attention. This done, she strode to the side of his bed, pointed at his palpitating face and said: "I am Cockikikorax, Wicked Witch of the North-North-East and I have come to you, King Wilmore, because you are in great need, and only I can help you." The King quivered a little and asked what need in particular she was thinking of. "You want a wife", she replied, "and I have come to give you one." She pointed at the door, where a fortuitously timed flash of lightning revealed a masked woman wearing a white dress. "Here is your bride!"

King Wilmore would have liked to object that he needed better proof than a witch's say-so before he would accept a woman as a princess. In fact he was about to suggest that his companions accompany him to the throne room, where the girl could try on a glass slipper, which he had prepared earlier. However, before he could say anything he found himself standing in the castle chapel, with his Archbishop reading the wedding service.

At the point where the Archbishop asked "Do you, Wilmore?" the King, who had been thinking that things were perhaps moving a bit fast, decided that this might be an opportunity to regain control of his affairs. He was on the verge of saying "no" when he saw the Witch's expression. King Wilmore's reading had made bountifully clear to him what sort of fate overtook people who disobeyed witches, so he decided that discretion was the better part of valour and said "yes" instead.

So far, all that King Wilmore really knew about his wife was that she had a good figure, clean fingernails and some rather unusual friends. However, it was now her turn to be interrogated, so he hoped at least to find out what her name was. The Archbishop turned to the masked woman and began to say "Do you A…" but just at this moment the Witch started to cough extremely loudly, and by the time she had finished the question-and-answer session was over. King Wilmore realised that in the face of such deliberate obstruction he had no hope of discovering _anything_ unless he took direct action. Therefore, as soon as the ceremony was over he reached out, intending to remove his wife's mask and hence hopefully solve the riddle of her identity.

The Witch's hand shot out and, grasping the King by the wrist she pulled him round until he was looking straight into her eyes. "You may not speak to your wife or see her face until she lets you" she said. "If you break this prohibition I will take her away, and return her only when the time is right." As she spoke this threat the walls of the chapel seemed to dissolve, and King Wilmore found himself alone in his bedroom with his new wife.

It was Angela's practice to wake the King at about nine o'clock each morning, but on this occasion she failed to do so, and he slept until noon. When he finally awoke he felt rather grateful for this odd omission, as he didn't really feel up to explaining his sudden acquisition of a wife to other people when he was far from being able to explain it to himself. At the moment, his sole knowledge of his wife was carnal, and though this was pleasant enough in its way he couldn't help but think it would be quite nice if he had any idea who she was.

As it happened, she was still asleep, and it crossed the King's mind that if he was to remove her mask now and then carefully put it back again she would never know. He failed to consider the possibility that she may be under some form of supernatural observation, which he should perhaps have done, given the manner in which she had been introduced to him. When he pulled the mask away it revealed the features of Cockikikorax, and he recalled (too late) that his book was full of examples of princes who had been tricked into marrying witches, feeling a sick horror at the thought that he seemed to have joined their ranks. The Witch could clearly tell what was passing through his mind, because she cackled briefly before saying "No, I haven't tricked you – I don't drink the blood of _boys_", with an obscene leer that clearly suggested that she did drink that belonging to other kinds of people.

The Witch sat up and grasped King Wilmore by the collar, so that her long nose was nearly touching his trembling one. "I told you that I would take your wife away if you tried to see her face, but you didn't believe that I could see what you were doing, did you? Well, I have hidden her where you can only find her if you become rather less stupid which" she added contemptuously "does not seem very likely. Until then she is lost to you, but remember – when you next see her she will have your son with her. Farewell!"

And so she vanished. In twelve hours King Wilmore had first acquired a wholly unexpected wife and then promptly lost her again, so it was scarcely surprising that he was a bit vague about what to do next. Eventually he realised that as nobody but him knew anything about the night's events he could get away with pretending that they had never happened, and then he could carry on with things just as before. Indeed, the Prime Minister – who had begun to wish that he had never put the idea into the King's head in the first place – was so overjoyed that he accidentally declared war on seven neighbouring kingdoms.

The ensuing military activity didn't bother the King over-much, and his life quickly regained its former vegetable tranquillity. In fact, the only thing that disturbed him at all was his growing conviction that all was not well with Angela. She was certainly not her usual cheerful self, and intense observation over a period of some months made it clear that she was putting on weight around the middle. When King Wilmore asked her if she had any idea what the cause of this mysterious swelling was she replied by gazing reproachfully at him, saying "Surely you, of all people, know why" and burst into tears.

This rather puzzled the King, implying as it did that Angela appeared to believe in a certain degree of omniscience on his part. He didn't consider himself to be much of an expert on diseases of the female, but she clearly thought that he could do something so, as he was very fond of her, he decided to do his best. After careful consideration he came to the conclusion that she must be upset because she was losing her figure, so he purchased a bottle of "Slimmo", a preparation that he had seen advertised in the local newspapers as a sure path to weight reduction. King Wilmore presented this to Angela, telling her (rather smugly) that it was the solution to all her problems, but she did not seem very grateful, or so at least he deduced from the fact that she threw it at him.

The next day she was found to have vanished, leaving behind her a note in which she asserted that the King was heartless a pig and proclaimed her intention of looking for somebody who would appreciate her. King Wilmore was amazed – he had no idea what he had done to provoke Angela into using such emotive adjectives, but he regretted it. In fact he went so far as to put a card in the corner-shop window saying that if she would come back he would promise to stop doing whatever it was that she objected to. As we have mentioned, the King was very fond of Angela, and as the months passed he came to realise just how much of his domestic contentment had depended on her. He finally realised what a fool he had been to search abroad for a wife, when a pretty good candidate for the position was locally available.

By now nearly a year had passed since King Wilmore had last tried to get married, and the Prime Minister (who had recovered his confidence) thought it was time to have another go. Bearing in mind the disastrous consequences of his last effort in this direction, he decided to approach the King with a specific candidate in mind. Having found a suitable specimen he bearded the King in the throne room and suggested that he marry her. King Wilmore had no idea what to do – he couldn't marry her, unless he wanted to start a career as a bigamist, but he didn't really want to have to explain his rather bizarre matrimonial arrangements to the Prime Minister. He therefore played for time by saying that he wasn't in the mood just now. The Prime Minister was persistent, and asked if he could be a bit more specific, so the King claimed that he was upset because of losing Angela.

The Prime Minister suggested that, with all due respect, mourning for a departed chambermaid was scarcely a good enough reason to delay such an important matter of state as the King's marriage. In fact he insisted that the King either marry the Princess or give a good reason why not. King Wilmore racked his brains for a reason, but fortunately his best effort (he had ear-ache) was spared an airing, because at that moment thunder rolled and Cockikikorax appeared. She turned to the stunned Prime Minister and observed "The King cannot marry, because he already has a wife."

It is not surprising that the Prime Minister was a little querulous at receiving this startling information, and asked the Witch to justify her remarks. "A year ago I gave King Wilmore a wife peerless among her sex," she said "but he was a fool and lost her. Now he is worthy to have her returned to him, and here she is!" She clapped her hands and, accompanied by the customary thunder, the masked woman whom King Wilmore had married a year ago appeared. She was carrying in her arms a child so similar to the King that the Prime Minister was convinced of the truth of Cockikikorax's claim, and started to congratulate the King on having begotten an heir. He found this a bit tricky, as King Wilmore was hiding under the throne, but the Witch dragged him out, saying "Well, will you take your wife, or are you going to reject her _again_?" with a threatening intonation that suggested she had strong ideas about what his answer should be. Faced with such a choice he gave a grudging acceptance – as he couldn't have Angela he didn't really see that it mattered who he married.

The Prime Minister was finally happy – so far as he was concerned an heir was an heir no matter how mysterious its provenance – and he insisted that the Queen be crowned immediately. The Archbishop was called and everything went smoothly up to the point where he had to say "I crown you Queen …" when he realised that he couldn't because he didn't know what she was called. There was an awkward pause, and then, as King Wilmore looked listlessly on, the Queen reached up, removed her mask and said – smiling at his sudden astonishment – "I am Angela."


End file.
